Where the Men Still Aren’t

Markland posted an entry back in December that linked to an article on DoubleViking.com about how Los Angeles is not for the manly. The author’s lame excuses were summarily shot down by a lot of your comments – his view of LA seems to stem from little more than a passing knowledge of hair metal, Comedy Central, tabloid fodder and a drunken Saturday night on the Sunset Strip in 1992 – but I’d like to add one more item to the list.
Okay so here’s the original post, in ascending order:

1. Most of the city’s cash is made from people playing pretend (a point we have since discussed).
2. No bars, only clubs.
3. Most shitty pop music is recorded there.
4. They have the worst stand up comics (he uses Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia and Steve Guttenberg(?!?) as examples).
5. Abundant use of plastic surgery.

And my entry:

6. Almost every “man” I invited to see the excellent Rambo last weekend said no because “it looks dumb.”

I’m sorry but I don’t see any intellectual difference between watching New York get flattened while a bunch of rich, annoying SoHo hipsters get eaten by a giant monster in Cloverfield and watching John Freakin’ Rambo systematically liquefy a murderous jungle militia. In fact, I found it a little bit harder to swallow Cloverfield‘s “dopey friend of the main character with a camera” conceit than Rambo‘s “one last mission” plot (the word is used very lightly). Both movies are stupid in their own way, but they’re still great fun, though.

Anyway, I probably wouldn’t be so annoyed if Meet the Spartans hadn’t come in #1 at the box office.

(I’d like to note that on imdb.com, Spartans has been rated only a 2 out of 10, while Rambo has cracked the site’s Top 250 category.)

19 Replies to “Where the Men Still Aren’t”

Nostalgia may’ve propelled Rambo to the Top 250 on IMDB, but it’s still only got a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to Cloverfield‘s 76%. I find RT’s tomatometer ratings relatively reliable. Of course, Spartans has an astonishingly bad 3%, so there’s no reason at all for it to have beaten Stallone at the box office.

I’m not quite sure the hype. My 14 yo freshman and his friends went to see Cloverfield. They thought it was lame and wanted their money back. When quizzed…they didn’t get the arty camera work, but worse the monster was just stupid. This from the Xbox PS3 generation…they are becoming immune.

They wanted Rambo this weekend when the crowds die down. Am inclined to let them see it as they know that is all fake but still like the shoot ’em ups.

It’s been my recent experience that any film that spans more than five years from it’s prior (Star Wars/Freddy/Rocky) is usually going to be bad, if only because we have an amazing precedent. I feel fairly confident Rambo is the same. I hope Indiana Jones doesn’t fall into this rut.

For my money, I wish I hadn’t paid for any movie in recent months except for Into the wild and No Country.

I kind of feel bad for Stallone. When he burst onto the scene (’76, I think it was) with “Rocky”, everyone seemed to believe he would be a formidable force as a writer-director. But then he got caught up in his own pretense with awful, bloated movies like “F.I.S.T.”, “Paradise Alley”, and, of course, “Staying Alive.” After that tripe he has once again been reduced to recycling the tired old Rocky and Rambo franchises. A pity, but it’s not like he had a bundle of talent to begin with.

and for all of its ham-fisted dialogue and lunkheaded acting, Rambo is a fast-paced, tightly-knit film. it’s more thrilling and exciting than thought-provoking. if you were looking for anything more than that you were probably in the wrong theater.

Just like the only time I saw Deep Throat was projected over a stripper on Broadway in San Francisco, and the only time I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was projected over Vox Pop at the Cathay de Grande. Context is important.

On a basic level, without even bothering to analyze the movies beyond the surface, one movie is about showing everything in explicit detail and the other’s all about everything that doesn’t happen on the screen.

Plus, you can’t claim the intelligence line when your entire post is ridiculously sexist.